Erepsin
Erepsin is a mixture of
, but it is also found widely in other cells. It is, however, a term now rarely used in scientific literature as more precise terms are preferred.History
Erepsin was discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century by German physiologist Otto Cohnheim (1873-1953) who found a substance that breaks down peptones into amino acid in the intestines.[1][2] He termed this hypothetical protease in his protein extract "erepsin" in 1901, derived from a Greek word meaning "I break down" (έρείπω).[3] His discovery was significant as it overturned the previous "hypothesis of resynthesis" which proposed that proteins get broken down into peptones from which proteins may then be resynthesized, and helped establish the idea of free amino acids instead of peptones being the building blocks of protein.[3]
Erepsin was originally thought to be a single enzyme or a mixture of a few enzymes involved in the terminal stages of the breakdown of peptides to free amino acids in the intestines.
Properties
Erepsin may contain
References
- ISBN 0-87169-191-4.
- doi:10.1515/bchm2.1901.33.5-6.451.)
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - ^ PMID 359089.
- PMID 18910712.
- ^ .
- PMID 16992755.
- PMID 16558717.
- .
- .
- ^ James Batcheller Sumner; George Frederick Somers (1943). Chemistry and methods of enzymes. Academic Press. p. 146.